Deciding Where to Focus Can Make or Break a Company’s Initial Success

In the early stages at Elevate, we faced the critical question: Where should we focus our energies? It's easy to get sucked into that “the customer is always right” attitude, and indeed, customers are important.?

But at Elevate, we took a somewhat unconventional route.

From the beginning, our focus was not customer-centric but on operational excellence and efficiency. We asked ourselves: What features do we create? What functionality? Where do we focus our dollars??

The answers led us to invest our resources into operational efficiency and the underlying technology.

We gave considerable attention to the administration experience by enabling customer success with fewer errors and faster processing of applications.? Let’s face it – the age range of people applying for medical marijuana cards is in the upper tiers, and their grasp on modern tech can sometimes be shaky.?

This wasn't a move away from the customer but, rather, a deep dive into the operational aspects that would directly impact the customer experience.

We also knew we were juggling multiple stakeholders. Beyond customers, there were administrators, operations teams, doctors, and the dispensaries we partnered with. We aimed to achieve a balance where all these stakeholders felt seen without prioritizing one over the other.

This unique focus on administrative experience and operational efficiency created a solid foundation to build upon. It led to the development of technologies that reduced errors, accelerated application processing, and streamlined operations. We even partnered with certain dispensaries to create brand-new technology to boost customer experience and retention by streamlining the process.?

And remember – we are not a brick-and-mortar company, so our entire focus was in the virtual realm. And this intense focus on operations has been crucial to our success.?

The takeaway: While customer service is undoubtedly critical, it's only as good as the operational efficiency supporting it. Operational excellence, combined with a careful balance of stakeholder needs, was the sturdy foundation upon which our early success was built.